UTPA Health Services Research Initiative

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DESCRIPTION (PROVIDED BY APPLICANT): The University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) is the second largest Hispanic Serving Institution in the U S. and it educates more Mexican American students than any other institution of higher education in the country. UTPA serves the educational needs of one of the poorest regions in the U.S.-the U.S.-Mexico border communities located in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. According to The University of Texas- Pan American Compact with the University of Texas System, the highest priority long-term initiative of UTPA for the next ten years is to become the doctoral research university of South Texas. In order to achieve this objective, UTPA is interested in developing new graduate degree programs and in increasing the research capacity and productivity of its faculty, especially in areas of regional strategic significance such as health services research. This AHRQ M-RISP application seeks to develop a Health Services Research (HSR) Initiative within the UTPA Institute for Population Health Policy (IPHP) to strengthen the research environment at UTPA and to enhance the competitiveness of faculty members in health services research. The research activities to be undertaken under the HSR Initiative primarily focus on health disparities and health care utilization/access for priority populations-more specifically, low-income minority populations in the U.S.-Mexico border and the uninsured. The HSR Initiative also takes advantage of an ongoing collaborative partnership between the IPHP and the Leonard Davis Institute (LDI) of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. The LDI will provide technical expertise, mentoring and support to the proposed HSR Initiative. The Specific Aims of this M-RISP application are: (1) to develop a Health Services Research Initiative at UTPA, (2) to enhance the capacity of individual faculty members to undertake health service research, with a focus on research in low-income minority populations and the uninsured, and (3) to develop and foster research dedicated to reducing health and health care access disparities among Latino populations, particularly in the U.S.-Mexico border region. The HSR Initiative will support four individual investigator research projects which deal with community uninsurance and health care access, the use of health care services in the U.S.-Mexico border region, severe weather and health care use by low-income and uninsured vulnerable populations, and the cost-effectiveness and net-benefits of school-based health promotion programs. The proposed HSR Initiative will also actively promote the development of research projects by junior faculty and graduate students which focus on the U.S. Latino population and are consistent with the goals and objectives of both AHRQ and the UTPA-IPHP HSR Initiative.